How the First Sentence of Bush’s New Book Breaks from Political Memoir Tradition

Matt Drudge, a fedora’ed figure from the Internet’s antiquity, has published what he claims is the first sentence of George W. Bush’s memoir, Decision Points. According to the Drudge Report, the book begins, “It was a simple question, ‘Can you remember the last day you didn't have a drink?’” Presumably, the libations-centric question sends Bush on a Proustian (shame) spiral throughout his early alcohol-abusing days. (The first chapter, also according to Drudge, is called “Quitting.”) In any event, as a first sentence, it’s fine; there’s nothing about it that makes us particularly dread reading the second sentence. Note that this opening also avoids the classic political memoir trope of including a significant date in the opening sentence.To wit:

• “Early on the morning of August 19, 1946, I was born under a clear sky after a violent summer storm to a widowed mother in the Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, a town of about six thousand in southwest Arkansas, thirty-three miles east of the Texas border at Texarkana.” — Bill Clinton, My Life

• “On 2 May, 1997, I walked into Downing Street as prime minister for the first time.” — Tony Blair, A Journey

• “When Japan bombed Pearl Harbon on December 7, 1941, I was a seventeen-year-old high school senior at Phillips Academy, Andover.” — George H.W. Bush, All the Best

• “It was an exceptionally clear summer morning.” — Rudy Giuliani, Leadership (This sentence features in this list because the chapter’s title, listed just above the opening paragraph, is “September 11, 2001.”)

Bush’s less than rigorous interest in the specifics of recent history may finally prove to be an asset!